Something Familiar
by moffwithhishead
Summary: Sometimes all you need in the face of tragedy is something familiar to hold onto. Rose/11. One-shot.


**A/N: I DON'T KNOW WHY I WROTE THIS AND I WANT TO CRY AND I'M REALLY SORRY. I HATE ME TOO. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own DW. Damn it. Or the song.**

* * *

He shouldn't be here. It's not safe for him to be here. If he stays here too long the whole of time and space could rip apart and fall to pieces. He's done worse in an afternoon if he's being honest with himself but this is so reckless and so uncharacteristically dangerous... this is something he would have done when he was younger. Not now. Not something this big and this monumentally stupid... But he's trying not to think about that right now. He's trying not to think about any of this. Right now he just needs to see her. He needs to have someone he knows, someone he loves, tell him it's going to be alright.

Before the Doctor can stop himself, can talk himself out of it, he's walking out of the TARDIS and running across the street to a dumbstruck Rose who's staring at the blue box like she's seen a ghost. Her arms are open before he even gets to her and when he does, they're holding onto each other for dear life. He can hate himself for this later, and he will hate himself for a very long time because of this, but right now he's with Rose. Beautiful, smart, clever, funny, compassionate, caring, lovely, dazzling, amazing, **fantastic** Rose. She's older now, a mum with kids and she certainly looks the part, but she's still gorgeous. She's still his Rose and he's still her Doctor. For the moment nothing hurts because they're together and he can forget what happened in New York... forget what's going to happen sooner than he'd like with River. Forget everything the past twenty four hours have made him remember.

The hug is over sooner than he would like and Rose is holding his face in her hands, looking him over with a sad, knowing smile on her face, "You look good... I mean, I'm rather fond of your other face but you look good." Her hand is running through his hair now and this is something he hasn't realized he missed until this moment. "Hair's not as good..." She doesn't need to say anything else. They both know how Rose felt (feels?) about his old hair.

"Doctor... how are you here? I mean... is it safe?"

He can't quite bring himself to say it, that would make it too real, so he shakes his head. Rose is staring at him for a moment before she says something again, trying to read the expression on his face. She's seen it before, at Bad Wolf Bay, both times he dropped her off in this universe. It's the same face he has when he's trying not to cry, trying not to let his anger get the best of him. And it's a face that should scare Rose, she knows it should scare her, but it never has. The only thing that scares her about this face is that she's still not sure how to make it better, how to make him not hurt, how to take the pain away. John makes the same face sometimes... when he's had too much to drink and all the things the Doctor has seen flashes through his memory. When he's heart broken. When the kids are hurt. When he thinks that Rose doesn't love him like she loves the Doctor. And he's not wrong, she doesn't love John like she loves the Doctor - she'll never love anyone else like she loves him - but she _does_ love John, she loves him with all her heart. Which is why she isn't kissing the Doctor right now, why she isn't distracting him in the way that she wants to.

Instead she's grabbing his hand and pulling him back into the TARDIS, shutting the doors behind them and dragging the Doctor up to his room. It's different in here, the TARDIS, and it takes Rose a little longer than she'd like to admit to find his room, but eventually she does. It's the very last room in the TARDIS (she tries not to think too much what this says about his sense of self-worth) and Rose isn't surprised to find that it smells musty in here, like it hasn't been used in decades. Hell, it probably hasn't, the stubborn bastard never sleeps. He claims Time Lords don't need to sleep but Rose knows better. Rose has him laying down on the giant bed almost immediately and sets about pulling off his shoes and jacket, trying not to think about how ridiculous and young he looks. The Doctor, to his credit, doesn't protest nearly as much as Rose was expecting him to, and lets her undress him enough that he won't be uncomfortable later.

Once the shoes and jacket are off, Rose is laying down on the bed with him, running a hand through his hair reassuringly and humming the old Gallifreyan lullaby he'd played for her ages ago. It was the same song John sang to the kids when they couldn't sleep. It was the only thing that had ever calmed either one of them down when they were like this. The longer Rose was with John, the more she realized that the Doctor was right - they were the same, just one was human and one was Time Lord. The Doctor recognized the song immediately and clung to Rose, tears silently rolling down his cheeks.

They'd had this conversation before, many years ago, about if he ever cried to not ask about it. Never ask about it. And as much as Rose wanted to ask about it, wanted to kill the thing that made her Doctor hurt this way, she didn't. She just pulled him closer and kept singing the song, rubbing his back gently and pretending like she didn't know he was crying. He started mumbling something when Rose restarted the lullaby and she realized he was singing the words along with her. Eventually he stopped crying and they both fell asleep with their arms wrapped around one another. For the first time in a very long time, since the last time River did the very same thing Rose was doing for him, the Doctor slept without a nightmare (or as he called it, remembering).

* * *

Of course he awoke before Rose, who was apparently quite tired herself. He managed to extricate himself from the mess of limbs on the bed and went off to see if he could find the coffee maker that she'd always loved. Paradoxes, rips in the universe, Weeping Angels, losing his best friends, getting closer to losing his wife, it could all wait for right now. The Doctor was leaving soon but not before giving Rose a proper thank you and probably apologizing to John for stealing his wife away.

The coffee maker was hiding in the kitchen that Amy liked to use (of course) and it hurt to make himself go in there and retrieve it, but instead of the stabbing pain it had been earlier it was only a dull ache in his hearts now. The same ache he got when he thought of all his companions who were no longer with him and the home he no longer had and how he was alone again. The universe in all its perverse glory has won again and taken the people that he loves for no other reason than it can.

He's dangerously close to Time Lord Victorious territory when Rose finds him in the third kitchen, clutching the counters so hard his knuckles are going white, and the same crappy old coffee maker she bought when they went to the 1950s working on the counter in front of him. The TARDIS and a lengthy note from someone called River left in the Doctor's bedroom filled in the blanks for Rose this morning which is why instead of a reassuring hand on his back she walks over and hugs him from behind without saying anything. She can feel the tension leave him as soon as she has both of her arms around the Doctor and she would be lying if she said it didn't make her smile. "Coffee ready yet?"

"Almost... haven't used this thing in a while."

"It's a coffee pot Doctor, not one of your alien tools."

"Alien tools? What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Sonic screwdrivers aren't native to this planet you know."

"And how tragic for you lot... who uses regular screwdrivers anyway?"

Rose laughed and pulled herself up on the counter next to him, running a hand through his hair again until the coffee maker notified them that it was ready. The Doctor walked over to the other side of the kitchen and got Rose's mug out before making her cup exactly the way she took it when they were together. She doesn't stop him when he puts in one too many sugars and takes the coffee with a grateful kiss to his cheek and a reassuring pat on his hand. With anyone else in the whole of creation, Rose would be asking them to talk about what happened earlier and what it meant, but not with him. Not with her Doctor. Even if he's got a different face, he's still her Doctor. Still the same lovely, lonely, beautiful broken man that she fell in love with all those years ago. He knows that she knows what happened and she knows that he's grateful for her being there for him. She's not going to chastise him for risking ripping the universe apart just to see her because he's going to do it enough himself when he's alone again.

He's grateful for her silence, truly grateful, and shows it by resting his head on her shoulder while she drinks her coffee and runs her hand through his hair. This is familiar, this is good. This is something that can replace the dull ache of the memories in this kitchen with a much more fuzzy and nostalgic memory. They may look different, they may talk different and act different, but they're still the same people. The same nine hundred year old Time Lord that fell in love with the same beautiful nineteen year old shop girl.

It's too soon when he's standing up straight and making himself hurry about like he normally would, blathering on about how he's got a date with Queen Elizabeth and if he's late one more time the woman's going to behead him, which is his way of offering Rose to come with him. He knows she's going to say no, he expects it now, and she does, with a bit of longing in her eyes as she says it. "Gotta get back to the kids... they'll be waking up for school soon. John's got to be having a fit right now, he hates having to get them ready for school by himself."

He'd known about the kids and the family Rose and John Smith had made for themselves. He's seen pictures of the kids and it hurts in a way that's a little more than a dull ache in his hearts. Knowing what their kids would have looked like shouldn't hurt as much as it does but the Doctor shoves those thoughts aside and smiles at Rose as he leads her back to the control room of the TARDIS. The hug this time outside of the TARDIS isn't as desperate and they both let the hug linger for a little longer than necessary. Rose is about to go when the overwhelming urge to confirm the thing he's been telling himself since the first time he left Rose at Bad Wolf Bay.

"Rose... are you happy?"

"I am."

"Good... and Rose?"

She turned back to look at him upon hearing her name being called again, "Yeah?" The Doctor stepped forward and rubbed at the back of his head, shuffling his feet in a very similar manner that his previous regeneration would have done, "The thing that I never... got to tell you. On the beach when I should have... I just... I do. I still do." Rose gave him a small smile before crossing the street, "Quite right too."

The Doctor is still smiling when he walks back into the TARDIS and sets about getting back to the right universe. He's not better, honestly he'll never be better, but he's as good as he's going to get for right now so he asks the TARDIS to play some music that he'd like. Of course it's the same lullaby Rose sang to him last night. It's the audio playback from last night... and for right now that's enough to keep him going.

* * *

**A/N: The lullaby Rose sings that I found on deviantart and can't for the life of me figure out how to properly link the original in the story so HERE: Gallifreyan Lullaby by FrenziedFerret**

Through the meadows of crimson grass  
Or beneath the sheen of silver glass,  
The shine of crystals in the sky,  
Sparkling over you and I.

Through the lands of wild Endeavour,  
Our hearts will beat as we run together,  
Over ice and snow, forever we'll know,  
That we'll always have each other.

A dancing star passes by,  
Falling fast through the darkened sky,  
Make a wish, as it falls,  
Four beats heard as the war calls.

But listen I not, to its infinite sound,  
Just lay with you on the softened ground.  
Lie beneath a thousand lights,  
And watch with you the beautiful sights.

Ignore the trouble, forget the pain,  
Lay here with me and they'll be slain.  
Listen to my hearts as they sing a song of new,  
And whisper the tales of my love for you...


End file.
